Zechariah 13:6 And one shall say to him, What are these wounds in your hands? Then he shall answer… Wittingly or unwittingly, through a culpable negligence or haste, Christ is wounded in His cause, or in His spiritual body, in the house of His friends. 1. He is wounded when Christians grow cold in zeal, slack in duty, or forgetful of their solemn vows. They show indifference, ingratitude, selfishness. 2. When His cause is injured by the unbecoming conduct of His followers. Scandal in the Church is scandal heaped upon His name. 3. When indifference is shown by them to the success of the instrumentalities by which His cause is promoted. These instrumentalities are vital with Christ, as though His blood flowed through them, and His voice spake by them, and His heart beat in them. He is in the word, the sermon, the prayer, the praise. 4. By inattention to the Gospel, with its messages of duty, its invitations and exhortations. 5. By their lack of sympathy and cooperation within their sphere, with the institutions of charitable beneficence for the spread of the Gospel. 6. When Christians, instead of keeping the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, treat one another with superciliousness and bitterness; when their intercourse is not marked by that gentleness and forbearance which the Gospel requires. Here looks may be daggers, and words blows. And are there not those who, by inconsistent conduct, by neglect of the ordinances of the sanctuary, by worldliness, by passion, by unbrotherly feeling and act, dishonour their profession, disregard their solemn vows, and do injury to the cause of Christ? Is it not a fact, that all the assaults of infidelity, all the rage of profanity, all the recklessness of vice and crime, do far less to check the power of the Gospel than the scandals and offences of professed disciples? (E. H. Gillet.) Parallel Verses KJV: And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. |
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